For example, the idea of “data ownership” is often championed as a solution. But what is the point of owning data that should not exist in the first place? All that does is further institutionalise and legitimate data capture. It’s like negotiating how many hours a day a seven-year-old should be allowed to work, rather than contesting the fundamental legitimacy of child labour. Data ownership also fails to reckon with the realities of behavioural surplus. Surveillance capitalists extract predictive value from the exclamation points in your post, not merely the content of what you write, or from how you walk and not merely where you walk. Users might get “ownership” of the data that they give to surveillance capitalists in the first place, but they will not get ownership of the surplus or the predictions gleaned from it – not without new legal concepts built on an understanding of these operations.

The main thing Smith has learned over the past seven years is “the importance of ownership.” He admitted that Tumblr initially helped him “build a community around the idea of digital news.” However, it soon became clear that Tumblr was the only one reaping the rewards of its growing community. As he aptly put it, “Tumblr wasn’t seriously thinking about the importance of revenue or business opportunities for their creators.”

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I tried very hard in that book, when it came to social media, to be platform agnostic, to emphasize that social media sites come and go, and to always invest first and foremost in your own media. (Website, blog, mailing list, etc.)

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With Alphabet Inc.’s Google, and Facebook Inc. and its WhatsApp messaging service used by hundreds of millions of Indians, India is examining methods China has used to protect domestic startups and take control of citizens’ data.

Governments owning citizens' data directly?? Why not have the government empower citizens to own their own data?

Third, the post-LMS world should protect the pedagogical prerogatives and intellectual property rights of faculty members at all levels of employment. This means, for example, that contingent faculty should be free to take the online courses they develop wherever they happen to be teaching. Similarly, professors who choose to tape their own lectures should retain exclusive rights to those tapes. After all, it’s not as if you have to turn over your lecture notes to your old university whenever you change jobs.

We believe that Facebook is also actively encouraging people to use tools like Buffer Publish for their business or organization, rather than personal use. They are continuing to support the use of Facebook Pages, rather than personal Profiles, for things like scheduling and analytics.

Of course they're encouraging people to do this. Pushing them to the business side is where they're making all the money.